


well, i've been afraid of changing ('cause i've built my life around you)

by hearden



Series: Legacy of Power [10]
Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers, Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 06:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11731881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearden/pseuds/hearden
Summary: The five Yellow Rangers who Kimberly Hart missed opportunities with and the one she makes sure she won't let slip away.(A companion oneshot to Legacy of Power.)





	well, i've been afraid of changing ('cause i've built my life around you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emilyrambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyrambles/gifts).



> idk what this is but it's a lot of sad kimberly hart feels and meetings with yellow rangers that she missed with bonus reboot trini feels
> 
> loosely ties into chapter 9 of Legacy of Power but also stands independent from that

**i. dandelion**

Kimberly doesn’t get to say a proper goodbye to Trini when she leaves for the World Peace Conference. The last she sees of her best friend is a flash of yellow light as Zordon teleports Jason, Trini, and Zack all the way across the world and replaces them with three other teenagers with attitude.

To be fair, she’ll come to love Rocky, Aisha, and Adam all the same, but missed farewells will be a recurring theme for her and Trini.

She wishes she’d known it back then like she will years later.

Every now and then, Trini and the guys write, and it sends a jolt running through Kimberly’s heart. She tells herself that it’s just because she misses her friends.

But, really, it’s because the turn of the century has yet to pass and the world (and her family) is not ready for her to openly love another girl yet.

She encloses her heart in a piece of paper, folded into thirds, and sends it off to Switzerland.

 

-

 

When Kat takes over her sworn duty, Kat with the sunshine hair, Kat with those blue eyes, Kimberly retreats to Florida and throws herself into her training. The Pan Globals are no joke, and she doesn’t dare treat them as one. Without monster attacks plaguing her every waking hour, she has more free time to push herself until she passes out from exhaustion the moment her body hits her bed at night.

Kimberly has a boyfriend in Angel Grove, a best friend in South America, a _something_ stirring in her heart for a sweetheart also in Angel Grove, and she doesn’t quite have time for any of them.

Her calls with Tommy dwindle down to almost nothing.

She stops penning postcards to Trini and let the ones she receives in the mail pile up on her desk like a leaning tower of guilt.

And she doesn’t even _dare_ think of Kat.

Briefly, it crosses her mind that, in a situation like this, where she’s teetering on the edge of what, in a few years, will be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress, it’d be a good idea to call the one person she can trust with her entire life before she implodes.

But, Kimberly doesn’t pick up the phone and dial Trini’s number, and that’s the first mistake she makes.

 

-

 

Months later, when she’s winding down from being called back into action and the electricity under her skin feels like an addiction that’ll be hard to part with again, Kimberly is still missing something.

She sees Trini and Zack a lot more frequently due to St. Moineau reigniting their Ranger bond and reminding them all just what they gave up, but it’s not what she wants, exactly.

There are obstacles in the way, things that are stopping her from realizing what she _truly_ wants.

Kimberly can feel it in the way her heart skips a beat, though, when she sees Zack press a kiss to Trini’s ear or when they hold hands in a cafe and Kimberly pretends to find it disgusting and sticks her tongue out at them.

They’re still best friends, so she sits and listens whenever Trini gushes about Zack. It’s a little weird since she’s known Zack for years and to hear about him romantically from Trini is… well, it’s weird. Like, really weird.

But, hey, whatever floats her boat.

Trini often tries to turn the conversation back around to her and Tommy, and Kimberly shuts her down without fail every time, each time harder than the last. She’s not subtle about it at all, how much she _doesn’t_ want to talk about her relationship with Tommy and how they haven’t talked in literal months, but Trini keeps dropping small snippets of advice.

It’s her typical Trini Kwan brand of concern: always what Kimberly doesn’t want to hear when she needs to hear it.

Her teachers always said she’d been bad at following directions, so she makes no exception this time.

“You can’t keep running from this, you know,” Trini quietly says one night when they’re sitting out on the roof of Kim’s house, “The longer you drag it out, the more it’s gonna hurt in the end. For both you _and_ Tommy.”

The midnight sky won’t swallow her fast enough.

“Who says I’m running from anything?” she snaps back, clenching her jaw, “Tommy and I are doing fine.”

They’re not doing fine. At all.

She doesn’t even know where Tommy is at that moment. It’s well into the evening in Angel Grove, so he could be having dinner or doing homework or getting ready for bed.

Or he could be out fighting Putties or on another planet fighting Rita and Zedd or _anywhere,_ really, and Kimberly wouldn’t be any the wiser.

Trini doesn’t say anything in response, and the two of them end up sitting in utter silence for another hour before Trini gets tired and heads back inside to crash for the night, leaving Kimberly to glare at the twinkling stars in the sky.

It’s one of the worst fights they’ve had that’s not even really a fight because there’d been no shouting involved, but it had hurt all the same.

 

* * *

 

**ii. carnation**

At the first Ranger Reunion that’s not _technically_ a Ranger Reunion (it won’t be named that until years later), Kimberly eagerly books a flight from Paris to Angel Grove, suffering through a twelve-hour flight just to see her friends again.

There are only two teams at this point, hers and, well, not hers, and the lines are kind of blurry between the two. It’s still literally the same group of people, but there are different colors and shapes have, oddly enough, replaced dinosaurs.

She doesn’t comment on it too much and stays relatively quiet because between the ten of them, it’s all awkward and uncomfortable.

A Ranger Reunion only really works when there’s at _least_ two dozen people. And some beer.

Not to mention that she and Tommy kind of avoid each other like the plague, but there’s not too much room to do that in the abandoned building they all may or may not have broken into just to get some privacy.

Kat doesn’t meet her eyes, either, and keeps glancing at Tommy, which Kimberly would normally react with irritation if she were any normal girl, but she’s not. So, she sighs, lets it go with mature resignation, and downs a cream soda that she wishes were a beer.

Pink on Kat doesn’t surprise her, but it’s weird seeing Jason in Zack’s color (even though he says he’s gold), Tommy in Jason’s color, Rocky in Billy’s, and Adam in Tommy’s first.

And, then, there’s Tanya.

Tanya who, at first, she’d expected to be Aisha until Rocky told her that Aisha had switched places with Tanya when she found her Zeo Crystal in Africa, and then Rocky lost her at that point and Kimberly just keeps nodding as if she has any idea what he’s talking about.

What she _does_ know is that Tanya should’ve been Aisha.

It feels wrong and completely unjustified for her to be feeling this way, especially when Tanya probably already feels displaced, a stranger in a different country, a different _world_ , far from home.

Kimberly can relate, somewhat.

But, resentment still boils up inside of her.

She grabs Trini’s arm and drags her outside to go for a walk.

 

-

 

A few months later, she tries to kill Tanya.

Well, to be fair, Jason tried to kill her, too.

In fact, they _both_ tried to kill _all_  of the Rangers, so Kimberly doesn’t necessarily count that as a personal offense. At least, that’s what she tells herself to sleep at night, even as she wakes, trembling and nauseous, from nightmares where she’s cracking Kat’s skull open on the ground, throwing Tommy into Maligore’s lava pit, or breaking all of Tanya’s limbs with her bare hands.

There’s no instant remedy to the guilt that will haunt her from being possessed by a demon and forced to attack her own friends, but she picks up the phone and calls Trini in the dead of the night anyway.

 

* * *

 

**iii. bumblebee**

Trini dies in a car crash, and Kimberly’s world comes collapsing down around her shortly after college graduation.

 

-

 

There is no Ranger Reunion in 2001 because of Trini’s death.

Because, that year, Kimberly attends her best friend’s funeral, surrounded by Trini’s family, plenty of people from high school and Angel Grove, and seven Ranger teams, including her own.

Trini’s parents are slightly surprised at how many of their daughter’s “friends” showed up, especially at the ones they don’t recognize, and Jason and Zack make up a web of lies on the spot to wave off the appearances of the Rangers that had followed them.

After the official funeral, there’s a more private memorial up in the mountains of Angel Grove, one that’s definitely more colorful than the sea of sorrowful black Kimberly had stared at in the cemetery.

A death in the family should be handled properly.

She feels numb all over, but when Tanya, the next Yellow in seniority since Aisha won’t find her true family again for another few years, hands her a smoke grenade, some feeling returns to her heart.

It’s not the feeling that she wants, but it’s all she has left to hold onto.

Kimberly pulls the pin and throws it as far out as she can, relishing in the sharp jab of pain that comes from trying too hard. Pain is all that exists anymore.

Her eyes follow the trail of yellow smoke that billows up from the woods, a sharp contrast against the baby blue sky.

Down below the mountains, deep in the heart of Angel Grove, everyone else would be going about their day. Maybe, she thinks, someone will see the yellow trail in the sky and wonder what’s going on up there.

It’s not the same as telling the whole world what they’ve _really_ lost, and it hurts Kimberly more than anything that she can’t. That they can _never_ know what they lost when Trini Kwan died.

But, to her, it’s something. It’s them, a ragtag group of Rangers, up in the mountains, giving tribute to a fallen friend. To more than a friend.

 

-

 

There’s no new, complete Ranger team to mourn Trini’s death as Kimberly finds out when they’ve all settled down and decided to camp up in the mountains for the night.

There’s just two guys: Wes and Eric, a Red and his sixth.

The rest of them, Lucas, Trip, Katie, and Jen, all went back to the future, Wes tells her, because that’s where they’d come from, running through time to chase an evil mutant and his less evil mutant crew.

Times have _definitely_ changed since six teenagers and a bunch of robot dinosaurs.

Against her hunch that she probably shouldn’t, Kimberly asks about Wes’s Yellow.

He hesitates for a split second, so she presses on and urges him again.

This is what self-destruction feels like.

He knows that and she knows that, but after a silent moment of contemplating, Wes tells her about Katie Walker.

She had parents and a brother who she’d left in 3000.

Humans had some genetic engineering in that time, and, as a byproduct, Katie had _surprising_ superhuman strength.

“She could’ve probably crushed a bear,” Wes jokes, but his eyes are sad, longing, “But she was _so_ sweet. Like, she was strong, yeah, but the strongest thing about her was how gentle and loving she was.”

“I think you would’ve liked her,” he says with a nod.

Kimberly excuses herself and stumbles off into the woods, stopping when she gets a good distance away from their camp. Her hands are shaking, her heart is pounding in her chest, and blood rushes in her ears.

She vomits despite having eaten nothing for dinner and keeps heaving until it feels like her heart’s about to fall out through her throat.

Katie sounds a lot like Trini, she thinks, and worse, Trini would’ve loved getting to know Katie.

 

* * *

 

**iv. canary**

 

It’s _completely_ because she doesn’t want to face Kat that Kimberly doesn’t show up to the Ranger Reunion that takes place when Tommy shows up with four new kids in tow.

Completely because she wouldn’t want to see her so forgiving, so sweet ex-girlfriend who she’d just broken up with _months_ prior.

Totally _not_ because she doesn’t want to see how well Tommy’s adjusted to being a Ranger again.

She doesn’t meet Kira Ford because of that, but Kat texts her and tells her that she would’ve liked Kira with all that they have in common.

 

-

 

Over a year later, Kimberly visits New York on vacation and decides to drop by and finally meet Kira. It’d been through many, many text chains that she had found out that Kira worked with a record label deep in Manhattan -- many, many text chains that could’ve been avoided had she just straight-up asked Tommy. But, the wound of Trini’s death is still relatively fresh, and their team hasn’t fully recovered yet. So, nobody on the original team talks to each other for a long, long time except her and Kat.

She finds the offices of the label relatively easily, but when she asks the receptionist at the front desk if he knows where she can find Kira Ford, he turns her down.

“Kira hasn’t been signed to our label in months,” he says, frowning, “She left and moved out to the West Coast.”

“Do you know where on the West Coast she went?”

The receptionist shrugs, helplessly, “Uh, maybe. Something… Harbor? California, for sure.”

Oh. “Blue Bay Harbor?” Kimberly suggests with a raise of her eyebrows.

“Yeah, that's the one. She didn’t really explain why she was moving, though. Said something about changes in her life.”

Kimberly has no idea what that could mean, but she thanks the guy for his time and doesn’t dwell on it too much.

Come November of that year, at the annual Ranger Reunion, she sees Kira with an arm around Tori’s waist and understands perfectly.

 

* * *

 

**v. sunflower**

It takes Aisha years to find them, which Kimberly doesn’t quite get because it shouldn’t be all too hard, given how many Rangers there actually are by the time the news spreads through texts and Skype that one of their own has finally returned.

There’s no weird time paradoxes or whatever that comes with what Kimberly had understood of what Rocky had told her over a decade prior. Maybe Wes could help her grasp it a bit more, how she can remember Aisha and how Aisha can remember everyone else with the whole de-aging thing, but it hurts her head too much to think about it all by herself.

The news arrives in the spring, so with months to go until fall’s reunion, Kimberly doesn’t anticipate having to brace herself for seeing a best friend that she hasn’t seen since high school.

That is, until Aisha, somehow, gets her number and sends her a text, asking to go out for coffee and catch up like old times.

She doesn’t ask, but Kimberly’s sure that Kat gave Aisha her number and, for that, she’s going to kill Kat.

What does happen, though, is that she spends days staring at the one text, not replying, and panics a few times, conjuring up so many impossible situations in her head, most involving bad friend breakups, even though Aisha wouldn’t hate her in a million years. Probably.

Is it still called a breakup if they haven’t been friends in so, so long?

Kimberly worries over that question for another day, and then, Aisha texts again, with one word this time: “Coffee?”

Loathing herself beyond words, she texts back immediately and lies her ass off, saying she was busy and "forgot" to answer Aisha's first text and that, yes, she would love to meet up for coffee. She even tacks on an exclamation point and a smiley face at the end and mentally wishes she could be swallowed up by the earth.

When the day comes, Kimberly heads toward the Starbucks that Aisha had texted her the address of. She doesn’t question that it’s in Paris or how Aisha ended up in France. She doesn’t even question that it’s not too far from where she lives.

However, as she rounds the corner and gets to the intersection crossing where the Starbucks is right across from her, Kimberly spots Aisha sitting next to the window, already holding a table for her, and chickens out like the complete idiot she is.

There’s a stone in her throat, and she thinks about best friends and what losing another one could do to her.

Kimberly backtracks, her brain already igniting with hellfire anxiety, tears threatening to fall from her eyes, and dials Aisha’s number, fumbling out an utter lie of how something at work came up and she couldn’t make it today and if they could reschedule.

Aisha takes it all in perfect stride, and Kimberly can hear her beaming smile through the phone.

It makes her more nauseous than it should.

 

* * *

 

**vi. lemon**

 

Somewhere in between getting married and meeting a bunch of kids who remind her too much of herself and her old team, the stars had aligned in Kimberly’s life.

She’d gotten married, gotten better, and figured out how to live life like it should be lived.

The stars align perfectly so that, when Trini -- but not _her_ Trini -- shows up at her hotel room door, looking to finally talk about _her_ Trini dying, she's as ready as she could ever be.

Tommy excuses himself down to the cafe in the hotel lobby on the pretense of grabbing a bite to eat, and then, she's alone with a girl who looks nothing like her dead best friend but still gives her the same feeling, somewhere deep in her heart, of missed goodbyes and dying too young.

"I only came because I'm pretty sure you would've hunted me down and forced me to talk in the middle of a Starbucks or something," Trini grumbles, throwing her bag down on the floor.

At least this Trini has a feisty snark to her. It sets her apart from Kimberly's memories.

"I probably would've," she confirms with a chuckle, "This isn't a conversation that I'd let you run from."

Trini rolls her eyes, "Well, I don't know what you're expecting, but I'm not here to pour out my whole soul to you or whatever. I mean, yeah, knowing that... another me is dead isn't the greatest thing to think about, but, you know, I'm not her." She shrugs and shoves her hands into her pockets, "I'm never gonna be her."

"And I'm not asking you to be," Kimberly says, keeping her voice soft, "I just... I'm just looking after you guys."

"Nobody asked you to," Trini drawls, irritatedly, and when Kimberly flinches at her tone, she sighs, heavily, "Sorry. It's been a long day. That isn't even over yet."

She lets it slide, all too well knowing how stressful juggling Ranger business with a high school life is. "Do you want some water? Hot chocolate?" she offers.

"Yeah, hot chocolate's fine."

Kimberly goes to grab a packet out of the pantry and heat up some water while Trini sits down at the kitchen island behind her.

Trini speaks up as she's working, slightly startling her, not because she didn't expect the girl to speak, but because of the content of the question: "Were you in love with her?"

Kimberly almost drops the mug she's holding -- in her mind's eye, she does and can hear the shattering as clear as day -- and gingerly sets it down on the counter, taking a moment to compose herself before turning around to face Trini. "Why," she asks, mentally struggling to stop herself from visibly shaking, "would you think I was in love with her?"

The blank, casual expression on Trini's face doesn't even budge, but she glances down at her hands, clapsed on the stone countertop then looks back up at Kimberly. "Well, you'd probably say she was your _best_ friend out of the -- I'm assuming -- many best friends you've had, right?"

She thinks about Aisha. About Kat. About her original team, the one that followed, and the many unofficial ones she's kind of had over the years, born out of a weird web of friendships and some relationships.

She thinks about Tommy and how she married her best friend the day she married him.

None of them hold a single candle up to the one friend she buried fifteen years ago, though.

"Yeah," Kimberly replies, hollowly, swallowing past a stone in her throat that she thought she'd gotten rid of already, "She was my _best_ friend."

Trini nods at her answer, her eyes showing a hint of sadness. "So," she continues, quietly, " _Were_ you? In love with her?"

Kimberly takes a deep, shaky breath. She can feel her heart racing in her chest, and it takes everything in her willpower not to just run out the door and never look back.

She closes her eyes and mentally counts to ten.

"I don't know," Kimberly confesses, softly, feeling like a scared teenager all over again, when she opens her eyes and meets Trini's curious gaze, "I might have been, but I don't think... I don't think I knew it at that time."

She goes on, her voice starting to tremble, but she manages to keep it somewhat steady, "I was in love with her after she died and it- it broke me and after... and after, I wasn't sure if any of it had been real or if I had just, you know, been grieving and projected that onto her memory and called it 'love'."

There's a long pause. Kimberly waits for Trini to say something as the stone in her throat falls and settles uncomfortably in her stomach. Its taste in her mouth reminds her a lot of how grief had tasted.

Finally, Trini breaks the silence. "And now?" she asks.

"I still don't know," Kimberly admits, looking away and glancing at the kitchen cabinets instead, "I don't think I'll ever know."

The stool scrapes on the tiled floor as Trini gets up and Kimberly figures she's making to leave, but then, she comes around the island and stands in front of Kimberly, her hands in her pockets, a small, sad frown on her features.

"I think," Trini starts, her voice uncharacteristically gentle for the sarcastic front she always puts up around Kimberly, "that you're right -- you might have really loved her."

Kimberly pauses, not sure how to respond to that, and it takes her a moment to understand the look in Trini's eyes.

"The '90s were progressive, you know, but I... I was afraid of finding out what would happen if I fell in love with my best friend. And, worse, she was my teammate, so if it blew up in my face, then everything could be ruined," she says, shaking her head, "I didn't even dare think about it 'til I wasn't an active Ranger anymore."

"Well," Trini clears her throat and looks down at her socks, "Maybe, sometimes, because we're Rangers and because life is _different_ for us... sometimes, it takes a hard shove to kinda shake your reality and make you realize you like someone. Or, you know, _love_ someone. And, maybe... maybe she loved you, too, but she never realized it, either, because that shattering-reality moment never came."

"That's a bold claim to be making," Kimberly says with a bitter chuckle, wiping away the beginning of tears that are starting to well up in her eyes. Her heart aches so much that she could fill a waterfall with its sadness. "You can't possibly know if she'd love me or not," she adds, denial twisting like a knife to her gut.

"But, I do," Trini argues, evenly, "Because Kim _isn't_ you, but she is... and I'm _not_ your Trini, but I am."

Kimberly can't help the broken sob that tears itself out of her throat, and she messily wipes a hand over her face as her tears flow freely. "Just _stop_ ," she says, angrily, her chest tightening with grief.

This isn't how she saw this conversation going at all. For one, she expected she'd be more composed.

"Come here," Trini says, firmly, reaching forward to pull her into a hug; Kimberly struggles for a brief second, muttering her protests under her breath and between her sobs, but Trini's superhuman strength wins out in the end.

Kimberly reluctantly eases into the hug, openly sobbing into the fabric of Trini's shirt. She doesn't hug back, just keeps crying, but Trini's arms tighten around her, nevertheless.

Somewhere in time, she's in her actual best friend's arms in too many moments for her to count.

"I love you," Trini gently whispers into her ear, and Kimberly understands what it's supposed to mean for her. What this Trini is doing for her.

Shoulders shaking and heart threatening to bleed out onto the floor, Kimberly lets out a heavy breath.

"I love you, too, Trini."

**Author's Note:**

> why yes i was absolutely sobbing while writing this
> 
> Title from Landslide - Glee cast (cover). I love Fleetwood Mac and all, but the Glee cast version is superior and also gives me more feels.
> 
> the secondary subtitles are all things that are yellow if u noticed and if anyone asks, i'd be happy to elaborate on why an object was associated with a certain ranger


End file.
